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I guess I see a difference between pride vs self-respect. It's good to have self-respect. How are we defining pride?

Edited because I think saying 'this' has been overused now. /hipsterdiditfirst

In any case I agree.

I may as well have pride in the milk man/woman, for all the achievement it took for me to exist in a street where he, or possibly she, delivers.

'One of (Lucas) Cranach's masterpieces, discussed by (Joseph) Koerner, is in it's self-referentiality the perfect expression of left-hemisphere emptiness and a precursor of post-modernism. There is no longer anything to point to beyond, nothing Other, so it points pointlessly to itself.' - Iain McGilChrist

Suppose a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?"
"Suppose it didn't," said Pooh, after careful thought.
Piglet was comforted by this.
- A.A. Milne.

I don't have a problem with taking pride in your heritage per se. That includes heritages that are categorized as being "white." For instance, where I live, there is a large population of people of Pennsylvania Dutch background (roughly German, for the ignorant), and there are events dedicated to celebrating that culture. There's nothing about that that's putting down other ethnicities--it's just fun places where you can eat food you might not otherwise have access to, etc.

However

When people lump it together and call it "white pride," they almost never are just doing it to celebrate their own heritage. They're doing it to try to rally white people against the "invading horde of non-white immigrants who are slowly committing a genocide of white people." Uh . . . no.

This. I'm fine with being proud of Irish or German or Italian or Jewish or Chinese heritage. I don't see anything wrong with that. Sometimes it's not always a bad thing to know about your the past of your particlaur family. Actually, I find it fascinating, because it's almost like "applied history" in a sense.

As for Black pride, one reason that is applied so broadly is because there isn't that much knowledge of where exactly they came from, just (primarily non-Northern) Africa. And most of the countries were kind of created by Europeans anyway, and don't really reflect boundaries of actual ethnic groups. Although I do believe that non-white people can be racist, and when people say they can't, it always seems like semantic gymnastics to me. I guess people believe that if that were the case, it would somehow make racism "ok" even though it doesn't.

Another difference between white pride and pride in being some kind of minority is the purpose of the display. If you're someone who's black or latino or LGBT, then you frequently get the message in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that you are not as good as the majority group. This might be through not having your group featured in typical history classes or through having laws taking away your rights or other things like this. Being pushed down means that you're not on an equal plane as the majority group. And the purpose of these "pride" mantras or festivals is to try to push you up and counteract the negative messages that you hear from others. It also can be about trying to raise awareness of your plight.

But these reasons don't make sense for white people. Now, before someone says it, yes I know there are some cases where a white person lives in an area that mostly has black or latino people, and they can get harassed for their skin color. I know--I've had it happen to me. But this is the EXCEPTION, not the norm.

The few cases where white people get harassed don't compare in sheer quantity and numbers to the cases where people of minority races get harassed or discriminated against in some way. White people in general are just NOT oppressed like minority groups are. So there is no need to have big displays like the "white power" groups do. They don't do these things because of a real problem facing whites all over America. They do this because they are reacting to feeling a shift in power where they don't have ALL of the power anymore (although they still have more than others). This kind of "oppression" is really laughable. Well . . . on a second thought, it would be more funny if it didn't have the consequence of fostering racism against minorities.

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."--Ambrose Redmoon

this might be because i'm an idealist, but I support rights for everyone, and though I have more rights than most. I'd rather use my power to help those who are viewed as unequal achieve equality. I mean truly equal everyone has the same rights no more no less in my ideal world. I don't have pride because i'm a white female from an upper middle class background. I'm just human, that is all i am. And I'm not gonna be like this group is better than that group because they're are amazing people everywhere, there's also very shitty people everywhere. I realize that i do use discression in certain situations, like I'm not gonna be walking in the hood after dark.